Popular culture always throws up pinnacles of popularity,
songs, plays, games, and longer pieces of music that get played,
replayed, and further repeated more than reason suggests it is sane to do.
To anyone with the slightest sensitivity towards cliches
it is obvious that such pieces misserve the culture
that they are integral to. But to those sensitive enough
to resist what has become cultural baggage
it does not occur to them lightly
that part of mass popularity is mass engagement.
Thus the plays of Shakespeare, Handel's 'Messiah'
and other choral works retain their hold on the culture
more because people like to perform them
than audiences feel they have anything to learn
through watching these works being performed.
songs, plays, games, and longer pieces of music that get played,
replayed, and further repeated more than reason suggests it is sane to do.
To anyone with the slightest sensitivity towards cliches
it is obvious that such pieces misserve the culture
that they are integral to. But to those sensitive enough
to resist what has become cultural baggage
it does not occur to them lightly
that part of mass popularity is mass engagement.
Thus the plays of Shakespeare, Handel's 'Messiah'
and other choral works retain their hold on the culture
more because people like to perform them
than audiences feel they have anything to learn
through watching these works being performed.
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